More and more governments have started releasing their national strategies outlining priorities in adopting artificial intelligence (AI). This presentation focuses on the strategies adopted by more than a dozen countries between 2017 and 2019, reflecting on the dominant regulatory discourses and the (re)definition of the public-private ordering in the making. It contributes to current policy discussions by conceptually structuring the debates and offering a critical perspective of the governance of digital technologies of the future, distilling the proposed approaches for AI and their complex effects from a hybridity perspective. Using qualitative content analysis and comparative methods, the strategies of Canada, China, France, Finland, Germany, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and United States are assessed to determine the governance approach envisioned in the sovereigntist AI projects. It argues that purposeful design is at work in the synergistic interplay between the public and the private sector in the governance of AI, highlighting a hybrid configuration that is ethics-oriented rather than rule-based.

Presenter: Dr. Roxana Radu, Research Associate at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, University of Oxford

Moderator: Dr. Merih Angın, Director of MA-CSSL, Assistant Professor of International Relations, Koç University